What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.8.5
New Feature: Lockdown Mode
- Lockdown Mode disables screen interactions until turned off either from Home Assistant or with the exit gesture. The dashboard stays fully visible and live, so the tablet remains glanceable, but nothing on it can be tapped: perfect for cleaning the screen or for kids and untrusted visitors near the panel. Touching the locked screen just shows a brief "Screen is locked" notice.
- Setup lives only in the Remote Administration UI, on its new Lockdown Mode page; there is no page for it in the on-device settings. Beyond that page, the mode can also be toggled from Home Assistant through the Lockdown mode switch every device now gets over MQTT, so an automation can lock the panel at bedtime and lift it in the morning.
- While it holds, every Kiosk Mode protection arms at runtime without changing your stored Kiosk Mode settings, and wake word detection is muted. The shield covers the entire display at the system level rather than just the app window, so it stays up no matter what comes forward. Turning the mode off returns the device to exactly the protections you had configured before.
- Lockdown has its own exit gesture, fast taps anywhere on the screen with optional hold variants, gated behind the kiosk PIN when one is set.
- An optional
Blackout screenpaints the locked screen solid black and pauses the dashboard's rendering underneath, so a locked tablet is also completely private. - An optional
Allow screensaverlets the screensaver keep running while locked, if you prefer the clock over a live dashboard. Dismiss on motion stays deactivated while the lock holds, so someone walking past never unlocks the view.
Improvements: Kiosk Mode Hardening
- Kiosk Mode's protections no longer hinge on Android's "App is pinned" consent dialog: under Lockdown Mode the dialog never appears at all, and with Disable home button on, if pinning was declined or ever lost, the app now pulls itself back to the front about a second after losing the foreground.
- Closing the app from the
recentsscreen relaunches it immediately, and apps opened through the App Launcher are still left alone.